


No More Running

by Nihonkikuasa211



Category: Code Black (TV)
Genre: Angst, Disscussion of Surgery/Surgeons, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Past Relationship(s), Romance, Tag to 1x16
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:33:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5993398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nihonkikuasa211/pseuds/Nihonkikuasa211
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal is more emotional regarding his decision to become a surgical attending, and Christa is the one who comforts him as the insecurities come pouring out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No More Running

_No More Running_

Neal Hudson was sitting across the blue bench outside of Angels as he stared at his hands. His head was bowed. Although a part of him, since he had first come to the place he had come to know as home years ago, had known that he would one day have a scalpel in his hands... It still felt almost distant in his mind that he was a surgical attending. Something which he run away from with thousands of miles between his father, and of the surgical residency that had defined him.

Trapped him.

Imprisoned him.

_“Neal, has it occurred to you that you’ve run so far from your father that you’ve run past yourself?”_

Leanne’s voice filled in Neal’s mind, and the attending allowed himself to take a deep breath. _So, she too._ The former ER physician was not surprised by Leanne’s words. It did not...surprise him that she too, though she had not spoken it until today, that she believed that he was a surgeon. Ever since he had arrived at Angels with nothing but a shred of hope and fear mixed with a sense of defiance, _someone_ had mentioned, or asked, why he wasn’t a surgeon or upstairs in the OR. Even Grace, whom he had once thought knew him more than anyone, had mentioned of how good he was with his hands.

_“It wasn’t for you.”_

Neal was startled out of his thoughts by the voice of the one woman he had been thinking of.

“Hey.” The dark-haired attending could feel her moving across to sit on the bench. For a moment, their eyes met. Neal was the one that broke the contact, His dark eyes stared at the early morning sky instead, and inwardly tried to control the tightening in his chest.

_Anger?_

_Sadness?_

He wasn’t certain why he felt this way.

“Shouldn’t you be with Rosaline?” Neal muttered quietly, He allowed himself to look at Grace again, seeing her dark hair curl around her head. There had been one time that he would have taken a curl with his fingers and kissed it...but that time of their relationship had ended. Neal watched as Grace look at him, an unknown expression on her face as he continued to look past her.

“She’s asleep,” Grace stated quietly, “and I wanted to see how you were doing.”

Neal’s chest tightened again, almost painful as he heard the gentleness in Grace’s voice. As if she had never left. As if he was certain there was nothing that would have stop them from being together.

“I’m fine,” Neal said, cursing inwardly at the faint rasp of anger in his voice. He could feel his heart clench, as he felt Grace’s hand try to grasp his own. “I’m fine, Grace,” he repeated even as he felt a hard thump appear in his throat. Neal forced himself to look at Grace, and willed himself to not show her the emotions he was feeling – _still_ feeling, after a year.

“No, you’re not.” Grace tried to talk to him, but the image of her walking away from him made it hard for the male attending to look at her. “I know you, Neal, and I know that it has been a year, but I can still tell –”

“Grace.” Neal’s voice was tight, and the dark-haired doctor forced himself to take a faint breath. “Please, leave.” His breathing evened out, and Neal unclasped his hands. They were not shaking. “I need you to leave, please.”

He could almost feel the pain radiating from Grace as she looked at him, the pain raw as his own as she started to walk away. For a moment, Neal thought of saying something. He remembered the last time he had talked with her, the shouted words and the slammed doors. The sudden emptiness realizing that she was gone, and probably never coming back.

“You said that to me, you know.”

Grace turned, the confusion glaring in her eyes as Neal tilted his head towards her. He was reminded of when he had lied, told her that he was _flirting_ when he had one time mentioned looking behind God’s curtain.

“You said I was running away.” It didn’t hurt to say those words anymore. Not when they were the truth. Neal stared at Grace, who appeared to not be able to speak. “And you were right.”

“Neal –”

“No.” His voice was thick, and this time Neal could feel his hands starting to shake. “Don’t.”

“I was running away from who I was, and I’m not...running anymore.”

The tightening in his chest was almost too much; Neal forced himself to focus on something to remind himself to breathe, to not remember of the countless _rows_ and poisoned words he had exchanged with his father. And the moment when his father said he was proud of him.

“I didn’t mean to say that, Neal.” Grace’s voice was quiet.

“No, you did.” Neal’s voice was slightly clipped, and distant as his dark eyes wandered over to hers briefly. “You did mean it, and you were right.”

The dark-haired doctor had no idea how long he sat there after he heard Grace walk away. His eyes focused on the pavement, staring at the pale cement as his breathing evened out and the tightening in his chest subsided. He had made his decision. Although Neal would still work in the ER, he would be consulting on surgeries and using the skills that he knew he had honed for years. The thought of working under Campbell turned his stomach, but it was the fact that he had made the decision that he had been running so far away from that made something inside him want to break.

Neal knew who it was before he turned his face towards hers. _Christa..._ Neal thought. For a moment his eyes continued to stare at the pavement. Then, his face turned toward hers. There was an expression of empathy and something else on the resident’s face as she stared at him. She didn’t speak. Instead, she allowed him to continue to breathe and not speak, for a few moments, before he told something that he hadn’t told anyone.

“My first memory as a child was being held by my mother. I must have been...three or four.” The memory of being held, so warm and gentle, in his mother’s arms, but wanting to find his father remained in his mind long after the other distant memories of childhood had come. “I wanted to see him. My mother called for me, but I wouldn’t listen as I tried to look for my father, running in the halls of...the house I grew up in. I couldn’t find him. My mother tried to explain to me that he was at work and would come home, but I didn’t understand.” Neal paused and closed his eyes briefly, allowing the sun to caress his face. The beauty of the sky and the sun was different compared to the emotions he felt now. “Sometimes...I still remember the panic I felt. The panic of never finding him, and I remember crying.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Christa asked quietly. Neal looked at her, feeling her concern and warmth in her eyes bathe, soothing the swollen pain as he began to speak again.

“Because ever since then, I felt, and continue to feel, as if my father is so far away.” A brief ironic smile played across Neal’s lips. “Being English, my father was never one for physical affection or for apologizing. Every moment that I made, every decision and mistake imagined or not imagined, he commented on. It...degraded me, in both definitions. I couldn’t understand why my mother could love and be married to such a man, and I asked her that when we thought there was a quarantine.” Neal swallowed, and cleared his throat at the memory of that agonizing day. _“I love you. I love you so much.”_ In his career in the ER, Neal had been close to crying so many times. But making the decision to put his mother on the ventilator had almost caused him to lose whatever control he had. “In many ways, I still don’t. But...my father said that he was very proud of me, and that he was sorry that he couldn’t see his mistake until then." Neal's voice tightened and he breathed deeply. "He hugged me.”

“Have you talked since then?” Christa asked.

Neal shook his head. “Our relationship...is still too strained for that. I ran five thousand four hundred thirty-seven miles to get away from him, and surgery.” Neal took a moment to pause and looked at Christa. Her eyes were boring into his own, gentle and so understanding Neal wanted to not say the words about to come from his lips. But he had to.

“And now I find that I was running away from nothing. I’m...a surgeon now, here,” the dark-haired surgeon stated as his chest began to tighten again, “and I still can’t get over that fact that I –”

“Neal.” The attending looked toward Christa, his thoughts vanishing at the sound of his name coming from her lips. It sounded so beautiful, almost like a prayer, and Neal inwardly sighed with relief as he felt Christa’s left hand palm his cheek.

“You are amazing no matter what you do,” The blond resident’s voice was sincere, empathy echoing in her voice as her eyes – her beautiful blue eyes that Neal often dreamed of even when she was sleeping beside him on that one morning – haunted him.

Beautifully.

“You are amazing, Neal.” A soft smile played across Christa’s lips, and her right hand entangled in his hair, stroking the thick strands slowly. “As a surgeon, as an ER attending, and as a human being. I don’t care what you do as long as you made the decision for _you_.” Her gentle gaze looked at the stunned expression across Neal’s face. “You made the decision because of it was what you wanted, right?”

“Yes,” Neal stated faintly. He had told Grace the same, that he didn’t make the decision to save Rosaline’s life and because Grace had asked him to.

“Then why do you look sad?”

The answer came quicker than Neal had expected it to, and he felt his voice overtake his emotions.

“Grace told me I was running away.” Neal could see the shock in Christa’s eyes, and he willed himself to look at her even as the pain of those words suddenly became open again. “She said that I wasn’t being who I truly was...and that I was running away from my father.” A hollow laugh escaped from him as he remembered Leanne’s words. “It turns out that everyone thought that.”

“She hurt you,” Christa said with growing anger. Her eyes bored into Neal’s own, and he could see the pain deep inside. “She left you, and left you to bleed.”

“I did not bleed, Christa,” Neal protested. “I –”

“Then why were you not happy to see her, Neal?” Christa questioned, Anger stormed in her eyes. “Why did I hear only anger from you when I heard you talking with her, and why were you not able to tell me who she is to you when I asked?”

“She hurt you,” Christa continued. A distant look appeared across her face as she began to stroke Neal’s jaw with her fingers. “I know what it is like to be left, Neal. I cried for days after my ex-husband left me, and it still hurts. Even now that I have you,” she added quietly.

Christa did not often mention her ex-husband. When she did, Neal heard the wounds reopening and the pain resurfacing as she talked about her painful divorce. Although he knew that it could be likely that Christa’s ex-husband was broken as she was over the death of her son, anger burned deep within him at the thought of the pain and solitude Christa had to take because of one man. _Perhaps...this is what Christa is feeling now,_ Neal thought as fingers began to untie Christa’s tie that bound her hair. Neal would never admit it, but he loved doing this the most. Seeing her blond hair come undone, falling almost breathtakingly beautiful as it reached to her shoulders. Neal slowly kissed Christa’s undone hair, until he reached for forehead.

For a moment, their foreheads rested against one another, breathing in sync as Neal stared into Christa’s eyes.

“Thank you,” he whispered thickly. He was not daunted by the emotion as he stared at the woman who…meant so very much to him. “Thank you,” he repeated. “For today. For everything.”

The same words she had said to him registered in Christa’s mind as her mouth opened in a small “o.” Neal smiled then, the smile meaning so much as he stared with absolute happiness at the woman across from him.

He started to kiss her, slowly, as if wanting to memorize every corner and skin of her mouth. Neal could feel Christa’s lips move against his own, her hands cupping the back of his head and his hand slowly went around her waist.

_Thank you,_ their kisses said. _Thank you for being there for me._


End file.
